Avoid that Left Turn at Albuquerque
by Random Guise
Summary: Bugs Bunny often laments the fact that he should have made that left turn at Albuquerque; maybe it's about time that he did, with a little help from the author. I don't own these characters, and I NEVER ask my doctor "What's up?"


**A/N: A different take on the classic Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny.**

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Avoid that Left Turn at Albuquerque

"This is the ONLY way to travel" Bugs Bunny said as he continued to tunnel through the earth. As long as he avoided pipes and boulders he made good time and avoided most of the people above. Not that anyone should have a beef with him, but there are always those types of people that just can't leave sleeping rabbits lie.

The only trouble traveling underground is that you have to pop up occasionally to get your bearings and make sure you're going in the right direction. This Bugs did, and noticed that he was in a central park in downtown Albuquerque. He almost dived down into his hole to continue onward, but paused instead.

Why turn right?

When you thought about it, some of his trickiest encounters had been when he hadn't taken a left turn at Albuquerque. He squinted as he looked down to the street to the right and saw nothing extraordinary; a look straight ahead and then to the left provided the same outlooks.

Why not turn left for once?

Bugs turned toward no one in particular. "Isn't this the way these things always start?" he quipped before jumping back down into the hole, veering off to the left and out of town. He continued to tunnel for a short time and was just about to surface when he broke through a wall and found himself falling into an impossibly deep canyon. As he fell, he was passed by the Coyote who fell faster due to his scrawny, rapier build. The coyote landed on a flat rock, and shortly afterward Bugs fell beside him on the other side of the rock, propelling the desert dweller up into the air from the natural teeter totter. The coyote arced away and onto a boulder sitting on a lower ledge, which rolled off as he scrambled to grab the edge and pull himself up. The boulder fell downward, as Bugs watched the shadow grow larger and larger around him; the whistle of the huge rock stopped and the shadow froze, only to resume when Bugs peeked upward to spy it hovering only inches above him.

Bugs woke with a start; he realized he had been daydreaming instead of tunneling. "Wow, must have gotten some bad carrot juice" he mused. He shook his head and continued on his way, stopping to see he was approaching a large building. Intending to go around, he nevertheless tunneled into what must have been the basement of the building and found himself deposited on the floor of a room full of scientific equipment. Before he could react, he was grabbed by a mad scientist and clamped to a table. Nearby, a large red hairy creature with the name tag "Hello, my name is Gossamer" stuck on his chest stood, drooling and smiling with evil intent.

"W-w-w-what are you doing?" Bugs asked. "Are you going to turn me into a monster?"

"Oh, don't worry" the scientist drawled. "I don't do that anymore. Now this won't hurt too much..." he said as he jabbed a stick of something into Bugs' eye.

"Youch! What was that?"

"Lip gloss. I'm testing a new formulation on you before letting humans use it while I observe any allergic reactions you might present. There, that's done it; no reddening or swelling that a jab in the eye doesn't explain. Now let me try the poi-based hair gel..."

"Poi? No...no...NO! Anything but that!" Bugs screamed before waking up, trembling. It was only a dream. "Boy, was that guy was a stinker. Poi of all things!" he observed. He popped up to make sure everything was okay and continued.

After tunneling a bit he could vaguely hear music playing through the earth; it was muffled, but it sounded like a piano. "I love piano playing" Bugs trilled as he continued until he was under the source, then dug upwards. He stuck his head out of his hole and found himself in an old west saloon. Pulling himself upward, he reached high for leverage and placed his hand on the piano keyboard, realizing as he did so that the song that had been played by a short, gun-slinging prospector was "Endearing Young Charms". Inadvertently striking Middle C while pulling himself up, the note ignited a charge of dynamite hidden in the piano and Bugs awoke just as the blast would have hit him.

"I never was a fan of popular music" he tsked to himself as he felt for any damage before continuing his journey.

A short time later he heard voices from above and popped to the surface to see what the deal was. "Hello?" he called as he looked around and saw no one; however, his voice echoed somewhat and when he looked up he saw a large black opening while a voice continued speaking. "8...7...6...5..."

"I know that voice" Bugs said, trying to place the whiny, throat-restricted sound.

A vague memory of Mars came to him just as the voice said "...1...blast-off." A deafening roar filled the air as tongues of white-hot plasma hurled out of the tail of the spacecraft and downward, allowing the ship to lift off the ground.

Bugs shook himself sober. "I must be getting deliriums" he told himself, trying to push away the thoughts of incineration. "I gotta stop thinking about fire and burning and heat and stuff." Concentrating on cold cuts and iced tea, he continued to tunnel until once again he tunneled out into the open, but only fell a few feet into a wide dry river bed.

"Hey wabbeet!" called a decidedly French lumberjack on the riverbank. "You have convinced me to be good, yes?"

"If you say so Jacque...no damming up rivers anymore I hope!" Bugs yelled back.

"No worries my friend, I have paid my debt to societeeee and have seen the errors of my ways! Merci, mon ami!" The man waved and left.

"It's always good to help someone make up for their..."

Bugs didn't finish his sentence as a deep rumble shook the ground. He looked up and gulped as a wall of water twenty feet high rushed upon him. "...wrongs?" he managed before the aquatic behemoth smashed down.

Bugs hit his head as he woke up. He was lying in his tunnel and immediately needed to get some fresh air, digging up and breaking through the surface to gasp. Calming down, he saw that he was back in the central park in downtown Albuquerque, the line of disturbed earth behind him the only path shown.

"Gee, it was all a bad dream. A whole bunch of 'em, really. Phew!"

"Bad dreamth? Really?" a voice spoke behind him. He turned and saw Daffy standing on the ground beside him. "Fffunny running into you here. Wanna go get thomthing to eat? There'th a nithe plathe over on the leffft called 'Witch Hazel's Plathe' we could try."

"Left? LEFT? ARRRRRRRRGHHH!" Bugs screamed as he shot out of the hole and ran as much to the right as he could until he was out of sight.

"I wonder what got into him?"

The End

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**A/N: Why does Bugs almost always have to win, anyway? I combined that with the running gag of "I knew I should have made that left turn at Albuquerque" and got this.**

**In high school physics class, my teacher told us for a test one day that the Coyote was finally going to have a chance to win, but the last of the connected problems on the test when solved correctly led to a boulder falling onto him. We had to find the correct boulder and determine the force with which it flattened the sorry creature. (F=ma for those of you playing at home.)**

**Now I just may have a story where the coyote wins sometime, but for now we're getting even with Bugs.**


End file.
